Strong Derry voices blew the cobwebs away at a gathering in the Crawdaddy venue on Harcourt Street in Dublin this week.
"I have waited for you," said Derry actor Pauline Hutton as she read from Watermark, the newly published novel from Sean O'Reilly.
"Is this the day, is everything ready, is this how the day will look?" read the writer himself, when the two performed episodes to celebrate the novel, which is the first publication from The Stinging Fly Press, set up by Declan Meade.
"You work a bit every day and sometimes the roll comes and you haul away, and some days you get lucky and she comes and pays you a visit," said O'Reilly afterwards, describing the process of writing and the moments when the muse finds him.
"It was through music that I got interested in writing," explained the Derry-born writer. Reading about musicians such as Jim Morrison and "finding out that he liked reading poetry" was how it happened. "That's how it started for me."
"There's no one else like him ," said Niall MacMonagle, who was recently appointed to the National Library of Ireland board and has who just edited the poetry anthology, Open Door. "He's the Francis Bacon of his period. He's mad, bad and brilliantly lyrical and beautiful. There's a lyrical urgency to it. He makes grotty, grimy Dublin beautiful."
Others who came to the launch of the book and the new imprint included writer Christine O'Dwyer Hickey, Lilliput publisher Antony Farrell, artist Fergal McCarthy, poet Nessa O'Mahony, artist Fionnuala Collins, writer Liam O'Reilly, editor of Poetry Ireland News Paul Lenehan, and Derry-born fiddle-player Dermot McLaughlin, chief executive of Temple Bar Properties.